Swift - Nice Car - But... Review on Maruti Suzuki Swift

This review was written in mid 2005. In Dec, Maruti increased the production of SWIFT and honoured the long wait of all the waiting customers and met the commitment. Good Work Maruti !!!

This comment above was added in Feb 2006===================

I too hurried into the nearest Maruti dealer on the day Maruti Udyog launched Swift. I saw the vehicle, liked it, read reviews on Mouthshut. I wanted to book one for myself. Hesitated as I wanted to know the performance of the new car on indian conditions.

I waited for another month or so... After which I took a test drive, swift won my heart, and now I decided to make a booking. Talked to the sales rep of the dealer. Asked a number of questions about the car... Now I am all set for booking it, I learnt that I will have to wait till Jan 16th, 2006 for the delivery. And that too this is only a tentative schedule. This can vary upto a month and further by the time they deliver it would be end of March 2006.

I was confident and told the Rep that Maruti will not stay behind in the delivery, as there are number of bookings happening everyday etc... I was sure that Maruti will increase the production to meet this huge demand. Immediately the sales rep says that ''This is not going to happen'' to my surprise.

Now on further enquiry about the price advantage that I will get if I book today... the sales rep answered me saying that whatever is the price when I am alloted with a Chassis and Engine number, that will be my price. I wanted to make an advanced booking to win over the price hike that might happen any moment due to the huge demand for this car.

Now after listening to all these, I restrained myself from booking it, since I am not sure, what will be the quality of the product that will be delivered, when they expected to manufacture 2000 cars per month and end up delivering 10000 per month to meet the demand. Also, since there is no price advantage, why should I block the advance money with Maruti dealers.

This now looks like a private chit fund or financier who takes booking for everything and one fine morning he is absconding. I am not sure of what will happen. For other cars from Maruti they accept a booking for 5000Rs, where as for Swift, it is 50,000Rs. With this 40000 odd bookings, Maruti has a money reservoir. Also, many had booked swift by paying more than 70% of the price upfront.

Still the customers are waiting... Not sure of how long this wait will continue...

My advice would be to reconfirm on the tag price that you will get at the time of delivery. The question is, what will be the price of the booked car? Price at the time of Booking or at the time of delivery. If it is at the time of delivery, readers, watch out for that big change in the price tag, that maruti is going to announce soon. It looks like that is what is the marketing strategy.

Get Bookings... Hike the Price... Force the customer to buy for this hiked price.... Customers will also not care. If they cancel at that point of time which is 6-7 month down the lane, they will loose the time that they waited for for delivery of their dream car.....

Good luck...

Madhu